Meet the meter tax

Latest parking insult is likely not the last

Drivers who park at the 17 city-owned lots near neighborhood shopping districts are now being charged city and county taxes as well. (Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune)

Just when you thought you couldn't get any more indignant about the deal that privatized the city's parking-meter operations …

Those who park at the 17 city-owned lots near neighborhood shopping districts are now being charged city and county taxes on top of the ever-increasing fees charged by Chicago Parking Meters LLC. The result? An effective price increase of as much as 67 percent on top of the 17 percent increase that kicked in Jan 1.

In the three so-called concession lots in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, for instance, the pay-at-the-box rate is $1.75 an hour (up from $1 when the privatization deal began in 2009). But if you want to stay a little longer — 17 minutes is the "add time" button — the amount due kicks up not to a prorated $2.25, but to a taxes-added $3.75.

That's because when the price is between $2 and $5, the city charges a $1 parking tax and the county charges 50 cents. Stay three hours, and the total tax on your $5.25 parking fee jumps to $2.50 — a 48 percent rate — for a total of $7.75.

These are big numbers for districts with mostly little shops that for years have relied on shoppers being able to dump a quarter or two into a conventional curbside meter.

"We've had customers call to complain and tell us they're not going to come shop anymore," said Melissa Flynn, executive director of the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce. "Our merchants are frustrated. Why is the city making it harder on them to do business?"

The city and county, however, point out that the parking taxes are more or less what they've been for several years. It's just that Chicago Parking Meters LLC paid them for the first two years of the 75-year deal rather than passing them along to the customers, thus keeping the street-parking and lot-parking rates identical.

The company offered no explanation for this seeming generosity, but city officials said the reason was that Chicago Parking Meters didn't yet have the proper software to handle the somewhat complicated transactions. And, in fact, the concession lots now feature pay boxes that require users of the spaces to swipe their credit cards after they select how much time they want to purchase. The street-parking meter boxes require users to swipe first.

This deal changed in mid-February with a quiet announcement on the company's website saying that henceforth, "Chicago Parking Meters will add the required user tax to your parking time purchase. The user tax will be added automatically to your purchase, based upon your length of stay."

How quiet? The daily papers didn't cover it, and not even "Mike the Parking Meter Geek" who chronicles related woes at his blog, theexpiredmeter.com, took notice. "Totally went over my head," he told me.

And to be fair, there are bigger issues when it comes to Chicago Parking Meters LLC: As we've been reporting, the company is dunning the city for nearly $50 million in what it deems lost revenue when free parking has been given to the disabled and when metered spaces are out of service for such reasons as street closings. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is disputing that bill and has taken the matter to arbitration, but it's only the amount they're haggling over, not the cold reality that the contract allows the private company to send us a bill for closing a public street.

What looks ominous to me about the new, tax-ready machines is that I can find no language in the dense verbal thicket of the 75-year contract that prevents the city from someday levying parking taxes on top of parking fees for the use of on-street spaces in a desperate attempt to make up all the revenue lost when former MayorRichard M. Daleysold tomorrow cheaply so he could pay today's bills.

Can you possibly get more indignant about the parking meter deal? Of course you can!